The Physics of Faith

Seems easy enough, but often it’s more complicated than the simple declaration. So, if someone asks me if I’m a Christian, sometimes I ask them: “What do you mean by Christian?”

If you mean the sort of guy who pickets soldiers’ funerals and mocks their deaths, then no, I decline the nametag. If you mean a person who claims God brought misery and destruction on New Orleans because of a scheduled Gay Pride parade, then no, again, I decline membership in the club. If you mean someone who sees threats to my faith around every corner, or believes the world is out to get me because of it, then, sorry, again, no. That is not me.

I am a Christian because it is through Jesus of Nazareth -his life, his living, his death, his example and teaching and lordship- that I chase after God. The one we know as the Christ, hence Christian, is the model I look to in things of God. It is a joy-filled way. That is not to say it has always been an easy way I’ve walked, far from it. But most of the rocks in my road (Lots of rocks, big rocks, lots of big rocks!) have been due to my veering off into some ditch too far Left or Right. And, usually, this sidelong reel into broken life was the direct and predictable result of faulty thinking rather than authentic being. When we stay in the experience of God that simply doesn’t happen.

Relativity, Quantum physics, Isaac Newton and You

The world of physics is an amazing and mind-boggling place. Space warps around massive objects. Light has a top-end speed, or, wait, maybe not. Einstein is being questioned in some respects by the genius minds working in subatomic fields, and they get weirder than one can even get a brain around: If a closed box holds an object, before it is opened, all possibilities are actually in the box. Well, I don’t get it. But the boys down at the pool hall will tell you that it doesn’t matter at all. The only thing that matters is the simple physics of Newton. You remember: laws about equal and opposite reactions, two colliding objects will separate at a 90-degree angle, and so on.

When you’re lining up a bank shot and baby needs new shoes, parallel universes and the mass of energy don’t mean squat. What matters is what you can actually see and predict. And that works every single time. Newton wins because the physics he addresses occurs at a level we can actually experience.

Same thing with God. God is an experiential reality. Forget doctrine, scripture fights, dress-up or casual, traditional or contemporary, Evangelical or Roman Catholic or Main Line, Welcoming or Confessing. Forget all that stuff for just a minute and consider this: God is an experiential reality.

The trick is being open to the reality. Sometimes that means letting go of ideas, but usually it means letting go of self. It means being careful to actually use that big brain God gave us and think about matters of faith with deliberate intentionality. The cart gets tossed at times, but in the empty places we often find a still voice that resonates within us, and that becomes an experience all our own.